Wood Magic: A Fable

by Richard Jefferies

A few steps farther and he found a track crossing the hill, waggon-ruts in the turf, and ran along it a little way—only a little way, for he did not care for anything straight. Next he saw a mushroom, and gathered it, and while hunting about hither and thither for another, came upon some boulder-stones, like the one he had hurled down the slope, but very much larger, big enough to play hide-and-seek behind. He danced round these—Bevis could not walk—and after he had danced round every one, and peered under and climbed over one or two, he discovered that they were put in a circle.

"Somebody's been at play here," thought Bevis, and looking round to see who had been placing the stones in a ring, he saw a flock of rooks far off in the air, even higher up than he was on the hill, wheeling about, soaring round with outspread wings and cawing. They slipped past each other in and out, tracing a maze, and rose up, drifting away slowly as they rose; they were so happy, they danced in the sky. Bevis ran along the hill in the same direction they were going, shouting and waving his hand to them, and they cawed to him in return.

When he looked to see where he was he was now in the midst of long mounds or heaps of flints that had been dug and stacked; he jumped on them, and off again, picked up the best for throwing, and flung them as far as he could. There was a fir-copse but a little distance farther, he went to it, but the trees grew so close together he could not go through, so he walked round it, and then the ground declined so gently he did not notice he was going downhill. At the bottom there was a wood of the strangest old twisted oaks he had ever seen; not the least like the oak-trees by his house at home that he knew so well.

These were short, and so very knotty that even the trunks, thick as they were, seemed all knots, and the limbs were gnarled, and shaggy with grey lichen. He threw pieces of dead stick, which he found on the ground, up at the acorns, but they were not yet ripe, so he wandered on among the oaks, tapping every one he passed to see which was hollow, till presently he had gone so far he could not see the hills for the boughs.

But just as he was thinking he would ask a bee to show him the way out (for there was not a single bird in the wood), he came to a place where the oaks were thinner, and the space between them was covered with bramble-bushes. Some of the blackberries were ripe, and his lips were soon stained with their juice. Passing on from bramble-thicket to bramble-thicket, by-and-by he shouted, and danced, and clapped his hands with joy, for there were some nuts on a hazel bough, and they were ripe he was sure, for the side towards the sun was rosy. He knew that nuts do not get brown first, but often turn red towards the south. Out came his pocket-knife, and with seven tremendous slashes, for Bevis could not do anything steadily, off came a branch with a crook. He crooked down the bough and gathered the nuts, there were eight on that bough, and on the next four, and on the next only two. But there was another stole beyond, from which, in a minute, he had twenty more, and then as he could not stay to crack them, he crammed them into his pocket and ceased to reckon.

"I will take fifty up to the squirrel," he said to himself, "and the nut-crackers, and show him how to do it properly with some salt." So he tugged at the boughs, and dragged them down, and went on from stole to stole till he had roamed into the depths of the nut-tree wood.

Then, as he stopped a second to step over a little streamlet that oozed along at his feet, all at once he became aware how still it was. No birds sang, and no jay called; no woodpecker chuckled; there was not even a robin; nor had he seen a rabbit, or a squirrel, or a dragon-fly, or any of his friends. Already the outer rim of some of the hazel leaves was brown, while the centre of the leaf remained green, but there was not even the rustle of a leaf as it fell. The larks were not here, nor the swallows, nor the rooks; the streamlet at his feet went on without a murmur; and the breeze did not come down into the hollow. Except for a bee, whose buzz seemed quite loud as he flew by, there was not a moving thing. Bevis was alone; he had never before been so utterly alone, and he stopped humming the old tune the brook had taught him, to listen.

He lifted his crook and struck the water; it splashed, but in a second it was still again. He flung a dead branch into a tree; it cracked as it hit a bough, on which the leaves rustled; then it fell thump, and lay still and quiet. He stamped on the ground, the grass gave no sound. He shouted "Holloa!" but there was no echo. His voice seemed to slip away from him, he could not shout so loud as he had been accustomed to. For a minute he liked it; then he began to think it was not so pleasant; then he wanted to get out, but he could not see the hill, so he did not know which way to go.

So he stroked a knotted oak with his hand, smoothing it down, and said: "Oak, oak, tell me which way to go!" and the oak tried to speak, but there was no wind, and he could not, but he dropped just one leaf on the right side, and Bevis picked it up, and as he did so, a nut-tree bough brushed his cheek.

He kissed the bough, and said: "Nut-tree bough, nut-tree bough, tell me the way to go!" The bough could not speak for the same reason that the oak could not; but it bent down towards the streamlet. Bevis dropped on one knee and lifted up a little water in the hollow of his hand, and drank it, and asked which way to go.